AoIR taking place in Seattle this week

The annual Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR) conference is in Seattle this week, and promises an exciting line-up of panels, keynote speakers, and events.  See this link for the conference program and this one to learn more about AoIR in general. If you can’t make it to the conference you can always follow the AoIR Tweets, which are tagged with #ir12.

This morning I gave a talk on online labor, a topic that I have mentioned in previous posts.  My talk dealt with the pros and cons of being an online laborer in one particular community that I have studied.  The pros I discussed included enhanced feelings of freedom and flexibility vis-a-vis the work; better choices for jobs and new opportunities for professional development; and the chance to engage in meaningful communication with clients and colleagues alike.  The cons that I included in my talk were increased surveillance and monitoring; the control of employee communication through the use of service scripts; and tensions between increasing the scale of communication services and having to (de)personalize service communication.

This is a topic that I am increasingly interested in, so please do contact me if you’d like to learn more about this research.

What books, articles, and/or websites on the subject of online labor do you recommend?